Thirty-two rooms for the company's visitors

In 1911 and 1912 the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company built a hotel of thirty-two rooms in the center of Robertsdale, at 14 South Main Street, just south of its office building. The Historic American Buildings Survey report on it, three short paragraphs from a 1989 project whose research and writing were done by project historian Lola Bennett under senior historian Alison K. Hoagland, says the hotel was for company officials visiting the town, and that for that reason it got more attention to architectural detail than the miners' dwellings. Early photographs show a two-and-a-half-story clapboard building under a gable roof, with three wall dormers and a large veranda across the front. The National Register nomination for the Robertsdale Historic District cites an early photograph of its own for the same dormers and veranda and ties the hotel to the increased production in the area around 1912; the 1991 county inventory of industrial sites groups it with the depot, office and post office the company put up before the First World War.\n\nA number of people ran the hotel over the years, the survey says, and the company kept control of the operation. In 1948 it sold the building to Ernest Ross, the proprietor at the time. Ross ran it until 1975, then sold it to Jon M. Donaldson, who owned it when the survey was made.\n\nBy then the building had been renovated inside and out. Vinyl siding covered the clapboard, and the original veranda had given way to a double-height porch in what the survey calls a southern mansion style. The underlying structure, including some of the original window openings, remained. The survey calls the hotel the oldest non-residential building the Rockhill company erected that still serves its original purpose, and the district nomination agrees that it still functions as a hotel and keeps its overall massing, setting and some of its original window configuration.\n\nThe nomination's inventory row for 14 South Main Street lists it simply as a wood hotel with a side gable roof, built about 1912. Its photograph of the building, taken in November 1988, is labeled a view east of the Robertsdale hotel.

In 1911-12, the Rockhill company constructed a thirty-two-room, wood-frame hotel in the center of Robertsdale. The hotel served company officials when they visited the town, and as such, it received greater attention to architectural details than the miners' dwellings.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Robertsdale Hotel, written data pages, HABS PA-5563 data pages, p. 2 · character 912 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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